What goes on in marketing meetings at major brands and their ad agencies is something like this:

“Hey Joe, did you see Wal-Mart’s new Greener Good line? They are able to sell almost the same products but at higher margins. We should do something like that. We’d make a killing.”

And so goes the selling of a sustainable way of life.

Sustainable style soon will be added to the pantheon of existing “lifestyle choices” that consumers can decide upon when choosing how to define and separate themselves from their peers as they blithely cruise down the aisles of Ikea and Target.

Eventually, the word “sustainable” will not have the same meaning as it does on this blog because companies will position their products as sustainable, co-opting the word as it becomes associated with just another meaningless marketing campaign in the minds of most citizens.

The ultimate effect, I fear, will be for the word to be owned by the very corporations it was designed to supplant.

Green-washing (see cartoon above) was an earlier example of this co-opting of language. As always, Caveat Emptor and use discernment when a company tries to sell you their “sustainable” products.

Source: Montreal Gazette

Everybody’s doing it. “Smart,” “green,” “natural,” “pure” are today’s ubiquitous advertising buzzwords, capitalizing on the fragile state of planet Earth and what to do about it.

The trend also reflects and stimulates sheer societal peer pressure to show your true col-ours in the face of the ecological apocalypse.

Tom Wolfe’s famous dictum – “Style is always a window into what a person thinks of his place in the world or what he wants his place to be in the world” – rings even truer today on the environmental stage, where folks trip over each other to demonstrate eco-consciousness in the products they consume.

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Indeed, being environmentally unfriendly is the new taboo. Especially among those who consider themselves Born to Buy. The “green” and “smart” movement is a middle-class phenomenon, with all the status-seeking the petit bourgeoisie is historically notorious for. Yuppies, for whom consumerism is self-defining, get an opportunity to give their consciences a workout by buying green. It’s all about, as the mantra goes, “making a difference.”

In fact, these days it’s hard to tell the difference between green/smart ad campaigns and traditional not-for-profit public service announcements.

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The mainly young people in green and smart ads chirp with the self-satisfaction of knowing a good thing when they see it, even at Wal-Mart: “Hey, all-natural fibres. Cool.” They strut their smart sustainable stuff, safe in the knowledge they’ll never be stigmatized, like cigarette smokers (ugh). The geopolitical world may be in trouble -rife with war, inequities, racism, poverty -but don’t blame these smart people: they’re doing their part for the environment.

I seem to be on an anti-corporate rant this week. However, I thought that this article from Chris Hedges nicely summarizes why we are interested in sustainability. It is the same reason why we are drawn to search for solutions to a life of products and services that corporations tell us are convenient and comfortable. There’s something wrong with that life: nature is missing and this article explains it well.

Source: Common Dreams

Defy nature and it obliterates the human species. The more we divorce ourselves from nature, the more we permit the natural world to be exploited and polluted by corporations for profit, the more estranged we become from the essence of life. Corporate systems, which grow our food and ship it across country in trucks, which drill deep into the ocean to extract diminishing fossil fuels and send container ships to bring us piles of electronics and cloths from China, have created fragile, unsustainable man-made infrastructures that will collapse. Corporations have, at the same time, destroyed sustainable local communities. We do not know how to grow our own food. We do not know how to make our own clothes. We are helpless appendages of the corporate state. We are fooled by virtual mirages into mistaking the busy, corporate hives of human activity and the salacious images and gossip that clog our minds as real. The natural world, the real world, on which our life depends, is walled off from view as it is systematically slaughtered. The oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico is one assault. There are thousands more, including the coal-burning power plants dumping gases into our atmosphere that are largely unseen. Left unchecked, this arrogant defiance of nature will kill us.

Understanding the natural alternatives to corporate medicine is essential for sustainability. Governments want to control and restrict our access to natural products like soap, vitamins, essential oils, and herbs to make us dependent on pharmaceuticals. For more on this, see Codex Alimentarius below, a documentary narrated by Judi Dench.

Pharmaceutical remedies have their secrets in plants, of which we are excluded from knowing about. Let’s reconnect to the secret medicinal properties of plants, not inside a doctor’s office or laboratory, but outside in the environment of a yard, wildlife habitat, where the plant lives. We will prepare and learn about the origins of medicine and the secrets of plant healing from what is growing live.

WHERE?? **745 Rue Gratton (Du Collège metro + 8 minutes walk)

WHEN?? starting from July 4th, for the whole month of July 2010. Harvest of motherwort (leonurus cardiaca) limited to July 4th, 5th 6th 2010. time to be determined with participants

WHAT?? All of July, yarrow, lemon balm and other plants will be made into herbal tea, tinctures and more…

Cost: 10 – 30$ sliding scale + cost of alcohol and containers or you can also bring your own alcohol and containers (alcohol: vodka, gin, sambuka, or any hard liquor, that is 40 proof)

For more information and to reserve your place, call or email Nicole Fournier, 514-747-9857 nicole.fournier66@gmail.com

All Day Urban Permaculture Workshops, Movie Screening, and Potluck @ P3 Permaculture

Where: 1247 Rue Ste-Elizabeth
When: May 1st, 11am- 7pm
(Workshops and movies ongoing, Potluck From 3-7pm)

Are you interested in your food security? Are you in search of a new approach to designing sustainable human settlements? Or maybe you are just interested in new avenues of sustainable social development?

Join us on May 1st to discover and celebrate Permaculture. Get a chance to participate in our three great DIY Urban Permaculture workshops: How to make Seed Balls, Window Farms: R&DIY,and self watering planters for our Roof top garden. Help to green our roof and take a self-watering planter home.

We will be having a potluck so bring anything you like, we will be trying to follow the 100 mile diet and ethical food theme however it may not be feasible for everyone, so do not be shy, to just bring something to share.

All supplies will be on site, however, more tools and materials are welcome.

Movies to be screened:
Introduction to Permaculture
In Fear of Falling Food
Permaculture In Practice
Food Maters

Graham Calder
514.747.4699

The modern schooling system reinforces the short-term, throw-it-away culture with plastic toys, ink markers and TV in the classroom.

Thankfully, there is another way: Waldorf schools, also known as Stenier schools.

Named after the first school founded by philosopher Rudolf Steiner for the employees of the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette company in Germany, Waldorf now has over 1,000 schools worldwide.

The tenets of the education focus on whole person education and tailoring schools to fit the developmental stages of each child. Along the way, the philosophy advocates using all-natural materials in the classrooms – never any plastic or processed materials. Students learn the natural rhythms inside themselves and gain the confidence to express their unique individuality.

To learn more, meet parents and teachers, there is an open house this Saturday in NDG at the Montreal Waldorf School.

The quote above from Einstein summarizes why Waldorf is a sustainable education whose value will last a lifetime for its students.

One of my favorite writers, Howard Kunsler, today redefined the word “Hope” and takes it back from the U.S. President:

Perhaps it’s time to redefine “hope” in the greater social sense of the word. To me, hope is not synonymous with “wishes fulfilled.” In fact, hope should not be about wishing at all. Hope should be based on confidence that the individual or group is reliably competent enough to meet the challenges that circumstances present. Hope is justified when people demonstrate to themselves that they can behave ably and bravely. Hope is not really possible in the face of patent untruthfulness. It is derived from a clear-eyed and courageous view of what is really going on. I don’t think that defines any of the behavior in the United States these days. We’ve become a self-jiving nation intent on playing shell games, running Ponzi schemes, and working Polish blanket tricks on ourselves.

This is what sustainability is to me: seeing and then meeting the challenges that we face now and shortly in the future.

Whether that be ensuring clean water to drink, finding less expensive and less polluting  fuels for transportation or the greater challenges of feeding ourselves healthy, nutritious food in an era of climate change, the challenge is the same: to provide for ourselves while not destroying the planet’s assets that our children and grandchildren will also need to survive and grow as human beings.

This may be an idea whose time will shortly come if food prices ever rocket higher due to transportation costs. Any city in the world could grow fresh, local, organic fruits and veggies using this system:

VertiCrop – The Solution

In a rapidly urbanizing world where the majority of people now live in cities, localization requires that food and fuel be produced in an urban context. At present, there are no examples of a locally sustained urban community anywhere in the world. Urban sustainability is yet to be realized primarily because urban agriculture presents a number of technological challenges. The main challenge is a lack of growing space.

Vertical Warehouse Gardening

Vertical growing is a new idea currently emerging in the sustainability discourse which offers great promise for increasing urban production. Vertical growing systems have been proposed as possible solutions for increasing urban food supplies while decreasing the ecological impact of farming. The primary advantage of vertical growing is the high density production it allows using a much reduced physical footprint and fewer resources relative to conventional agriculture. Vertical growing, hydroponics and greenhouse production have now been combined into an integrated commercial production system, a system that has major potential for the realization of environmentally sustainable urban food and fuel production.

Valcent Products, Inc.

(English will follow).

La coalition de la Jeunesse du Canada pour le Climat est sur le point d’organiser la première étape d’un événement historique : Powershift Canada. Après le succès de ce même événement aux Etats-Unis, avec la présence de plus de 12 000 personnes sur les plaines du Capitole, et les événements Powershift à venir en Australie et en Grande Bretagne, nous pensons qu’il est temps pour les Jeunes du Canada de rejoindre le mouvement global.

Du 21 au 23 Octobre 2009, plus d’une milliers de jeunes provenant de tous le pays se rassemblera Durant 2 jours pour participer à des ateliers fascinants et des sessions stratégiques dans la ville d’Ottawa (sur les plaines du Parlement) pour construire une journée pour faire pression en faveur de la cause environnementale.

C’est une énorme opportunité pour tous les Canadiens de se rassembler pour créer une transition dynamique et claire vers une Economie plus écologique. Le temps est venu d’organiser cet événement Powershift car la situation environnementale est critique. Notre rassemblement précèdera directement les négociations des Nations Unies sur le Climat qui aura lieu à Copenhague au mois de Décembre. La communauté internationale a le devoir de pousser les pays à réduire leur émission de gaz à effet de serre. Le Canada est bien connu pour être un acteur peu enthousiaste sur le front international et notre action a donc une double importance : Nous avons besoin d’une position clair sur la scène international dont nous pouvons être fier.

Nous vous invitons dès maintenant, que vous soyez une organisation ou des membres appartenant à des communautés à Montréal de venir rejoindre le mouvement Powershift! C’est en même très excitant et très important pour nous de commencer à nous rassembler afin de construire le meilleur mouvement possible, le plus vaste et le plus fort que ça soit dans le Canada et à Montréal.

Rejoignez nous à 18h30, Jeudi le 23 juillet à 3480 Rue McTavish (salle Lev Bukhman, 2e étage) pour une session d’information et de discussion, nous avons besoin de vous. RSVP à Amara (a.possian@gmail.com). À bientôt!

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The Canadian Youth Climate Coalition is in the early stages of organizing a historic event called Power Shift Canada. After the success of Power Shift U.S., where over 12,000 youth united on Capitol Hill, and the soon to be Power Shift Australia and U.K., we think it is time for Canada’s own youth to join the global movement.

From October 21-23rd, 2009 over one thousand youth from across the country will come together for two days of awesome workshops and strategy sessions in Ottawa that will build to a revolutionary lobby day on Parliament Hill.

This is a great opportunity for Canadians of all backgrounds to come together to create a clear, dynamic transition to a Green Economy. The timing of Power Shift is critical. It directly precedes the UN climate negotiations taking place in December in Copenhagen where the international community must pull together a post-Kyoto deal on emission reductions. Canada has been a well-known laggard on the international front, which makes this action doubly important – we need an international stance we can be proud of.

We are inviting you, as well as other organizations and members of the community across Montreal to come out to join the Power Shift movement! This is an exciting and important time for us to start coming together, to build a bigger, better, stronger climate movement in Canada as well as here in Montreal.

Please join us at 6:30pm on Thursday, July 23 in the Lev Bukhman Conference Room (2nd floor) at 3480 McTavish St. for an information and discussion session. RSVP to Amara (a.possian@gmail.com). See you soon!

Much attention has been paid in recent years to what seems to be a growing environmental conscience in the United States. Going green used to be considered expensive and a luxury for those who could afford the trend. Now it appears that we are learning that not only is adopting more environmentally conscious attitudes good for our economic situation, but also our….health? Yes, if we dig a bit deeper we can see that dirty industries and backwards policy is actually harming the health of the earth for our children and the health of her inhabitants today.

How Does Environmental Policy Affect Public Health?

There are two levels of health consequences associated with dirty industry, both direct and indirect. The direct consequences are examples like increased asthma rates in areas with high smog indices. Chlorofluorocarbon release into the atmosphere has shown to decrease the filter of direct sunlight on the planet, resulting in more concentrated ultraviolet light reaching the surface of the earth. Perhaps it is no surprise then that in countries with depleted atmospheric gas, skin cancer rates are among the highest in the world.

The indirect health consequences are harder to see immediately, but closer examination reveals that these are, in fact, perhaps the most hazardous. Bi-products of dirty and backwards industries, such as coal and oil processing, include cancer causing substances like asbestos and benzene. A U.K. study conducted in 2002 indicated that coal and oil industry workers are at a much higher risk of developing mesothelioma (associated with asbestos exposure) and leukemia (traced to benzene and heavy-metal exposure). Dr. David Sugarbaker among many other doctors who specialize in this area understand that these are substances that can be directly traced to antiquated pre-regulation equipment in industries whose environmental hazards are even more inherent.

Can we really afford to continue on the path we were on before? Investment in clean industry means not a healthier planet for our children and grandchildren, but also a healthier place for us to live today.

Via: Globe and Mail

From sleek, Brazilian-designed ottomans made out of old flip-flops to gorgeous bags and totes crafted from sailcloth, woven paper, tent fabric and seatbelts, the wares at Galerie CO in Montreal’s Mile End neighbourhood may be among the most carefully selected in North America.

Among other criteria, they must benefit the environment, support the people who create them and – no small added task – reflect the latest design trends.

“I want to promote good design and create economic opportunities for the people who do it,” says founder Sarah Richardson, an Ottawa-born lawyer who spent 15 years as a policy expert advising governments and international organizations on sustainable trade. She opened Galerie CO less than a year ago, having come up with the idea after discovering dozens of talented designers, artists and craftspeople while travelling the world for her work.

“It’s a natural extension of my professional life. I’ve been working in trade policy for years and have seen some incredible stuff,” she says. “They inspired me. I wanted to do something practical and help these people market their products.”

CO takes its name from the three pillars of sustainable development: ecology, community and economy, three values that Richardson takes very seriously. She picks her wares with criteria she developed helping clients create sustainable economic projects. “I know where each item comes from and the story behind it,” she says.

Although many of her products come from style capitals such as London and Milan, a good number of their designers hail from Southern Africa, where Richardson spent much of 2007 crafting trade agreements to promote sustainable trade. more…